Griffins' valiant effort comes up just short

WYNDMOOR -- One bad period. One bad stretch. That is all that seperated the Church Farm basketball team from advancing past highly-touted Robert Vaux and into the Class A PIAA semifinals. But a horrid second period put the Griffins so far behind, and their desperate and courageous fourth-period comeback fell just short.

Church Farm battled uphill the entire second half, outscoring the Cougars, 39-27, but that second period was too much to overcome as Vaux ended Church Farm’s season with a 68-64 victory at La Salle High School.

The Griffins were outscored, 27-10, in the second period to put them behind 41-25 at halftime. Four 3-balls by Lester Mattox were the difference as Vaux hit eight three-pointers in the first half.

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“We played a good first period and were up by one point,” Church Farm’s Jan Bohm said. “But we had a real bad second period where we stopped playing as hard as we should and we stopped sharing the basketball. It was tough to come back but we kept getting closer and closer but time ran out on us tonight.”

Mattox scored 12 points inthe second period and Vaux went on an 11-0 run to open up the game afater Church farm held a 15-14 lead after one period. Aondofa Anyam did a great job on the Cougars’ all-everything senior Rysheed Jordan. Jordan scored just nine points on the night, makingonly one field goal. Anyam went down early in the third period with an ankle injury,but the Griffins (23-6) battled back anyway.

With Vaux up 59-48 with 3:28 to play, Tyler Ofray hit a long 3-ball, his second of four on the night, to make it a 59-51 game. After Karon Snead hit two free throws for Vaux, Larry Cermak took a nice feed from Ofray and threw down a slam dunk to make it 61-53.

Church Farm kept coming and coming and after a Bohm floater, it was a 62-57 game with one minute, 12 seconds to play. Jordan drained two free throws to put the lead at 64-57, but the Griffins responded with a Mlynue Reeves bucket inside to cut the lead to 64-59 with 46 seconds to play.

But Church Farm had to foul, and Jordan drained two more to make it a 66-59 game.After that, the Griffins were out of magic. After shooting 6-for-21 in the first half, the Griffins got red-hot, shooting 18-for-29 in the second half. Ofray led all scorers with 17 points, while Reeves had 13 points, Cermak added 10 and John Rodriguez threw down eight points. Vaux was led by Mattox with 15, all on 3-balls, and Amir Butler, who had a strong game with 16 points and 10 rebounds.

“We battled back after a second period where we did not do anything right,” Church Farm coach Marc Turner said. “But to play one of the top three or four teams, regardless of classification, in the state without our best player in Aondofa and battle back to lose by four, I could not be prouder of this group.

“This senior class won thee District 1 titles, went to to the state quartefinals three times and was 23-6 this year with a very tough nonleague schedule. They are a special bunch.”